


Guardian Angel

by Tchailenova



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Julian is an example of, Julian makes bad choices, Original Character(s), misplaced sense of safety, weeping angels as guardian angels, what not to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24155413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tchailenova/pseuds/Tchailenova
Summary: College student Julian has a close encounter with some muggers and develops a strangely fond relationship with the angel statues on campus. All is well, until an accident occurs.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Guardian Angel

**Author's Note:**

> I know it has been quite a while since I posted anything. Deepest apologies. I'm working on a large original work, and my fanfics have taken a bit of a back seat of late. I found this short story while going through some old folders and posted it at the request of a friend.
> 
> Originally written ca 2014, polished and posted May 12, 2020. I probably won't be expanding on this little premise, so if you enjoy it and find yourself inspired, make all the derivative works you please! (Just remember to link it appropriately so others and myself can find them!)

Julian picked his way between the shadows of a relatively dark street, passing alleys with a careful glance. In his drunken state he was sure that he kept seeing a figure in the darkness across the street behind him, and his glances down each alley kept him on edge. Julian was sure that he was about to be ambushed and mugged, or worse, and he didn’t want to let his guard down. He would be a pushover in his inebriated haze, and Julian didn’t want to give anyone any extra advantages.

A noise from the next alley he passed startled him badly and he reeled to recover his balance. The world started to whirl unpleasantly as he moved too quickly for his inner-ear to compensate for, and Julian’s faltering retreat ended with him sprawling backwards across the pavement. Colors exploded behind his eyes and he fought the sensation of the world tilting away without him. Shaking his head to focus and clear away the pain was a mistake that just made everything wobble a little harder.

Julian let out a strangled angry sound, feeling as though the whole world had acted against him.

There in the shadows, barely outlined by the dingy halogen lights, stood his ambushers. Two tough guys, probably too old to still be in school, but not quite fit to hold a steady job in respectable society. They were probably members of a gang, or they were vagrants, spurred into action by desperation or deep-seated violent tendencies. Perhaps their temperament was what kept them out of a steady job. Regardless, they advanced on Julian until a noise from across the street startled them into stillness.

He looked to the side as he scrambled to his feet, using their hesitation to pull his wits together, and saw only a pile of rubbish outside an antique store and a tall angel statue - like the kinds on fountains. One of the men chuckled, and Julian immediately refocused his attention and prepared to run, the noise had only bought him enough time to stand - not nearly enough to make a clean escape to a brighter street from which he could call a cab.

The cracking of knuckles and deep mocking laughter flooded his ears and Julian spun on his heels and fled for civilization and safety. Normally he might have tried to fight them, but he was drunk and acting on instinct alone. Besides, that noise had spooked him badly, and the feeling of being followed had only heightened his sense of being in danger.

They gave chase, and Julian led them on a fear-fueled game of cat and mouse, weaving down back-alleys and side streets, trying to find his way closer to the bright lights of the main street.

Eventually he turned to look behind himself, when he realized there was only silence in the dark night air aside from his labored breathing. Julian saw only an empty street behind him. No pursuers, not even the sound of pursuit. After a moment of assessment, Julian crept back to the corner and peeked cautiously around it, expecting to see his ambushers and would-be muggers, he still only saw emptiness.

The feeling of being followed returned to the forefront of his consciousness, forgotten in his blind panic, and Julian sank down against the side of the building. His flight of terror had thoroughly exhausted him.

He cast his eyes about, searching in the darkness for something strange, anything moving in the shadows, something that might suggest he was only moments away from being turned into a mess on the concrete, and found nothing to support the sensation of unease. When nothing happened, he made his way home in a daze.

* * *

For many months after that near-mugging incident, Julian watched the shadows like a hawk, always waiting for the men to come back and try again, but they never showed up.

Before long he noticed a common theme of the University’s statues. Many of them appeared to be angels in long flowing robes and in varying states of movement. After a while, he noticed something strange about their placement: they never seemed to be in the exact same place.

He thought to himself that someone in the grounds department must have quite a sense of humor; that perhaps the head groundskeeper was wondering if anyone would notice. Julian certainly had - it had taken him nearly a full term to realize it, but he had eventually noticed.

He tracked down the groundskeepers and requested to speak with the head of their department, asking after their choices behind certain decorations.

When he asked why the groundskeeper kept moving the statues around campus, the groundskeeper looked at him funnily and said, “Which statues did you mean, son? We only have a few, and none of them are angels.”

This answer unsettled Julian quite severely, perhaps he was seeing things? Perhaps these statues that he kept seeing but the groundskeeper was unaware of - and were certainly not moving around campus in a bad attempt at a practical joke - were a symptom of trauma. A bad memory or experience could manifest itself as hallucinations later in life in the victim, he knew, but these didn’t quite _feel_ like hallucinations. They felt quite real, and they occurred in the middle of the day in the bright daylight.

When had he first started seeing the angel statues? If he thought very hard about the night of near-mugging, there were a few moments of clarity that he could recall through the haze of drunkenness and memory-blurring fear. Among those feeble memories were: two male faces, threatening and mocking, full of offensive laughter; a pile of rubbish; the sensation of the world unpleasantly tilting swiftly away from him; and an empty street. In the pile of rubbish had been a fountain topper that reminded him very strongly of these statues he had been seeing on campus.

Julian ignored these apparent hallucinations as best he could, and went about his university life acting as though there _weren’t_ strange angel statues following him around everywhere. He had noticed them in town as well, now that he was looking for them, when he went on errands or as a late night escape.

The feeling of being followed never quite went away either, and he came to regard these anomalies as creepy, but not harmful. Ever since that first bad experience, he hadn’t run into any real trouble, and Julian had started thinking of the statues as his guardian angels, even though nobody else could see them and they were likely only figments of his imagination.

It made him feel better, and it was the only logical explanation, and he didn’t dare tell anyone about it, because they would just as soon lock him up in an asylum. He wasn’t insane, or mentally compromised, and the only other effect was the constant sensation of being followed. It wasn’t a bad thing, and Julian didn’t want to be ridiculed and have his mind picked apart by a fascinated scientist or psychologist.

* * *

After many months, he came to terms with his angelic entourage. It seemed to be everywhere at once, and yet totally immobile, and seemed to only consist of one following him at any one time. They looked upon him with benevolence, he imagined, and as far as he was concerned they had a history of protecting him from harm.

It didn’t matter what was actually the case, because they weren’t real and were only figments of his imagination.

He looked furtively over his shoulder again before slipping into a dark alleyway, pleased when the feeling of being followed only intensified. Julian was on his way home from the bar again, and didn’t want to be followed by anyone, and he wanted to make it home quickly. The end of term was coming up quickly, and Julian looked forward to it almost as much as he looked forward to the graduation that awaited him in a month and a half’s time. It had taken him a long time of hard work to achieve his degree, and he had no shortage of pride in his knowledge and achievement.

A sudden skittering of glass-on-pavement startled Julian, and he looked around in apprehension. The last time he’d heard that in an alley at night, he barely avoided getting mugged and left for dead. So Julian turned clumsily with fear in his eyes, ready to fight if he had to and looking for a way out to run if he could.

Instead of an empty alley with a cat stalking confidently across the entrance, or finding two threatening men closing off escape from his doom, his vision was filled momentarily with the figure of an angel.

Her arms were half-raised as though she thought to keep him from falling over, which was a nice gesture from his imagined guardian angel. At her feet was a still-spinning bottle that she’d kicked somehow. This proved his hallucinations to be in fact something much more ominous, but hey! At least he wasn’t insane.

Her face twisted in regret, fear, worry, and what might have been a tender desire to protect. In the next moment, however, everything disappeared and there was no more time to think of his guardian angel, or the glimmer of wetness that he caught glimmering on her cheek in his last moment before disappearing.

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case anyone missed the tags:  
> Julian's self-care when it comes to mental health is not to be emulated! If you think you are seeing things or might be hallucinating, please: CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN! He doesn't, for Plot Reasons (tm), but srsly: Don't be like Julian.
> 
> Also: If you think you might be followed and you're not in a state to defend yourself, DO NOT GO INTO THE ALLEYWAYS. Call a cab or call a friend. If you absolutely cannot do either thing, stay in bright public places. Don't be like Julian; he has plot armor, but you do not. ♥


End file.
